CONSTRUCTION

CREATIVE CONSTRUCTION A new kind of innovation for your city: An evaluation of Playable City Lagos 8
Keller Easterling studies the new economic zones in cities around the world. She describes
these as a new dynamic of power - where global architecture practices and multinational
firms have more say over design than residents of the city. 2 Easterling emphasises how
infrastructure is not just a physical constraint, it is also the hidden rules that structure urban
life. As power over this infrastructure moves beyond even the city or national government,
little opportunity remains for citizens to play a role in developing the rules that govern their
own lives.
This dynamic is replicated in so-called smart city technologies. This family of technology uses
data, to co–ordinate, analyse and target services: reducing traffic jams; less energy waste;
and public services targeted where they are most needed. Too often these technologies are
quickly standardised across a city or cities, missing the opportunity to respond to citizens’
differing needs.
The proliferation of plans for sleek and simple new economic zones or smart infrastructure
ideas can distract urban planners. But they also constrain the opportunities for others to play
a role in that planning - for innovation to come from entrepreneurial ideas found outside town
halls or large contractors.
New products and services come about, according to the Austrian economist Joseph
Schumpeter, through periods of repeated destruction and improvement that changed whole
industries. The now well-known idea of ‘creative destruction’ is a process led by entrepreneurs
that challenge incumbent businesses or destroy existing markets with a new way of doing
things.
Supporting entrepreneurship usually involves: access to knowledge, finance, market
environment, labour, entrepreneurial culture and a supportive regulatory regime. 3 Small
business support, accelerator programmes and leadership courses are often used as ways to
do this. But much like the challenges of imposed economic zones or smart city programmes
respond to, they can often suffer from a
one-size-fits-all approach.
Lagos morning. Photographer: Jessica Bland
They can end up as a mismatch with the
needs of people living in a city, failing
to work with the grain of their lives.
Part of the attraction of these kinds
of programmes is their novelty - the
new solution to long-term intractable
problems. This is sometimes useful, but
it can also ignore the silent ‘collective
unglamorous’, as Ash Amin from
Cambridge University calls it: “The
unglamorous consists of all those things
in the city that we take very little note
of, but which are absolutely essential for
our lives and our identities.” 4 These are
issues that can get lost because they
don’t have the attractive simplicity of a
new economic zone, smart city system
or accelerator programme for startups.
The Social and Economic Action Center (SERAC) in Lagos provides legal representation for
residents of informal communities including Makoko and Badia. They help them fight for the
right to stay or compensation for resettlement. However, the Lagos initiative that caught
global media attention in 2012 was the design of a floating school in Makoko. Architects and
engineers in Lagos and Amsterdam designed the prototype floating structure. The local
government threatened to shut down the first version. But the attention led to a change of